Last night in front of an audience of hundreds at a presentation at the University of Southern California, TV personality Bill Nye — popularly known as the “Science Guy” — collapsed midsentence as he walked toward a podium. Early indications are that Nye is OK, but what’s odd about the incident isn’t so much Nye’s slight health setback as the crowd’s reaction. Or, more precisely, its nonreaction, according to several accounts.

It appears that the students in attendance, rather than getting up from their seats to rush to Nye’s aid, instead pulled out their mobile devices to post information about Nye’s loss of consciousness.

Alastair Fairbanks, a USC senior in attendance for Nye’s presentation, told the Los Angeles Times that “nobody went to his aid at the very beginning when he first collapsed — that just perplexed me beyond reason.” The student added, “Instead, I saw students texting and updating their Twitter statuses. It was just all a very bizarre evening.”

Indeed, a cursory search on Twitter revealed a virtual play-by-play account of the incident. One student wrote, “Bill Nye tripped on his computer cord while speaking at USC, was out for abt 5 secs, got back up, spoke w/ slurred speech and fainted.”

According to the school’s student news outlet, the Daily Trojan, Nye asked, “What happened? How long was I out?” when he regained consciousness. Briskly picking up his humorous persona, he added, “Wow, that was crazy. I feel like Lady Gaga or something.” Nye’s publicity team didn’t immediately respond to The Lookout’s request for comment on the episode.

Still, in the annals of the digital public’s civic indifference, the Nye incident is nowhere near as disturbing as another episode reported in New Orleans earlier this week, which oddly enough also involved a humorist. Anthony Barre, a New Orleans man popular for his acid-tongued comic performances on YouTube using the handle “Messy Mya,” was murdered on the streets of the city’s 7th Ward — the historically Creole neighborhood chronicled in the HBO series “Treme.” As he lay dying, witnesses at the scene took to the Internet to chronicle the tragedy in real time, even posting photos of his body lying in a pool of blood.

Moments after gunshots roared through the 7th Ward on Sunday night, a lone snapshot appeared on the Internet.

In it, a 22-year-old man is lying cheek to the ground, crimson pooling around his neck. His eyes are closed, his torso curled.

Chaos explodes around him, with the arms of others pressed to the back of his head. And someone is holding a cell phone just inches from his face.

This is how the world learned of Messy Mya’s death.

Prior to this week’s episodes, perhaps the best-known incident of youthful digital passivity in the face of danger was the September 2007 tasing of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer at a speech delivered by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry. That episode immortalized the expression “Don’t tase me, bro!” The crowd of onlookers trying to capture the encounter on their cellphone cameras later prompted Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert to imagine the internal monologue of a bored-looking kid seated next to Meyer thusly: “He’s thinking, ‘I wish they’d stop tasing this guy, so I can get home and watch him being tased on YouTube.’ “

There’s a line of dialogue I remember from a movie called “Wild Bill” as the two characters entered a sleazy town:

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these” (Saint Paul, in 2 Timothy 3:1-5).

And dang, doesn’t texting and tweeting and video cameras ever bring to life the “malicious gossips” section of this prophetic passage?

I can’t even imagine a man collapsing in front of me and not rushing over to try to help him. So imagine how unimaginable it must be for me to imagine a huge crowd of people texting and twittering while a man falls down and lies unconscious on a stage.

A week ago I had a VA (Veterans Administration) appointment. A man in a wheelchair was trying to get through a door that shut on him. Ten of us immediately got up from our seats to help him.

But that was a far, FAR better generation than “the last days” group we’ve got now. It makes me nauseous to think about these effete, sanctimonious, sycophantic, self-righteous snobs.

These are the punks who voted for Obama in such huge numbers in 2008. They’re the ones who lecture us about the environment and taxes and gay marriage and abortion and illegal immigration and ObamaCare and big government and all the other politically correct crap.

On the tape, Gore states: “When I was your age and the civil rights revolution was unfolding, and we kids asked our parents and their generation, ‘Explain to me again why it’s okay for the law to officially discriminate against people because of their skin color?’

“And when our parents’ generation couldn’t answer that question, that’s when the law started to change. There are some things about our world that you know that older people don’t know,” he continued.

“Why would that be? Well in a period of rapid change, the old assumptions sometimes just don’t work anymore because they’re out of date,” Gore said.

And the only reason “the old assumptions” are “out of date” these days is because demonic rat bastard moralizing panderers like Al Gore have become the teachers of this terminal generation. And the same people who constantly congratulate themselves on just how wonderful they are don’t even deserve to be called “pathetic.”